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Why We Walk on Eggshells is an incisive look at the wrong turns judges, legislators, and other officials have taken in shaping American civil rights law and policy, and how those choices have led the country in disastrous directions. It is essential reading for anyone interested in restoring the nation’s commitment to equal opportunity for all and moving beyond failed policies of preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity, or sex.
—Heather Mac Donald, Thomas W. Smith Fellow, Manhattan Institute
What happens when left-of-center ideas on matters of race or sex can’t be challenged in polite company? Free from criticism, they slowly grow increasingly extreme, eventually losing touch with reality. This is how we find ourselves in the Woke Era.
In Why We Walk on Eggshells, Gail Heriot sketches out the practical incentives created by our civil rights law and policies that caused the woke ideology to develop and flourish.
One of the most important of those incentives was the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which for the first time made employment-discrimination lawsuits—including those based on harassment—lucrative for plaintiffs. Employers understandably panicked and started requiring what came to be called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training to ensure that employees would never say anything, no matter how trivial or even how true, that might be considered offensive. Employees were urged to walk on eggshells. Even statements like “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” were often forbidden.
Slowly workplace culture (and eventually American culture in general) evolved to resemble the culture that had taken hold on college campuses more than a decade earlier as a result of another of the many wrong turns in civil rights law—the Supreme Court’s fateful decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978).
Why We Walk on Eggshells is a masterful treatment of the legislation and judicial decisions that helped give birth to the Woke Era. It is for anyone who wants to grapple with how we arrived at our present woke crisis and discover a way out of it.
Why We Walk on Eggshells is an incisive look at the wrong turns judges, legislators, and other officials have taken in shaping American civil rights law and policy, and how those choices have led the country in disastrous directions. It is essential reading for anyone interested in restoring the nation’s commitment to equal opportunity for all and moving beyond failed policies of preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity, or sex.
—Heather Mac Donald, Thomas W. Smith Fellow, Manhattan Institute
Gail Heriot explains the rise, evolution, and consequences of “woke” ideology more definitively (and entertainingly) than anyone ever to tackle the topic. Informed by the unique perspective of a constitutional scholar who is one of the nation’s leading experts on matters pertaining to civil rights, she has authored the premier guide for everyone attempting to understand and navigate the frequently confusing and perilous world of DEI, political correctness, and all things related to civil rights.
—Peter N. Kirsanow, Member, US Commission on Civil Rights, Former Member, National Labor Relations Board
Gail Heriot is an indispensable voice on civil rights law. Her latest book chronicles the transformation of civil rights from its early goal of color-blind equal opportunity into the abyss of racial preferences and woke ideology. She is a first-rate legal scholar, but perhaps more importantly she communicates difficult ideas into accessible language that can be grasped by the non-expert. This should be required reading by all interested in civil rights law and enforcement.
—Linda Chavez, Chair, Center for Equal Opportunity
Federal civil rights law has turned America into a colony of the Karens from HR. Gail Heriot explains how that happened, and what to do about it.
—Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Tennessee Winston College of Law